The Cephalopod Coffee House: Blood of Dragons

I love fantasy. I read widely across genres, from picture books (of course) to literary works, middle grade and young adult, contemporary-realistic to steampunk and beyond. I've even dabbled in westerns and romance! But my favorite authors in later elementary school were Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman, and I have to admit: a fantasy novel with good characterization will get me pretty much every time. So in addition to all the books I'm reading on autism, plus critiques and papers I'm grading, I picked up some fantasy to help me with my sanity.

Enter Blood of Dragons, the best book I've read this month!

Robin Hobb writes some excellent characters, and I've been reading her books (in trilogies, although not exactly in order) for a couple years. And her endings--well, her endings make me happy. Blood of Dragons is the last book of four, and Robin Hobb gave me pretty much everything I wanted. Comeuppance for evil villains! Survival of those who absolutely had to live for me to be satisfied! POV from reptilian dragons who seem very much not human! Carnage (in all the right ways)! Internal, thoughtful characterization, where characters grow to accept their strengths! It's not quite as good as the Liveship Trader series (my favorite), but Blood of Dragons distracted me during a rough month, and that's about all I could want in a novel.